Gerard Baden-Clay trial: Jury requests information about alleged lies

Marissa Calligeros

The jury considering the fate of Gerard Baden-Clay has requested clarification about how it should interpret allegations the accused wife killer lied under oath.

The jury returned to the courtroom on Friday morning, for the fourth time since it began its deliberations, after sending a note to Justice John Byrne requesting he re-read part of his summing up of the case.

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“If you conclude that the accused lied because he realised that the truth would implicate him in the killing of his wife, you would need carefully also to consider whether the lie reveals a consciousness of guilt, merely with respect to manslaughter as distinct from also revealing an intention to kill or to cause grievous bodily harm,” he said.

“You may only use the lie about cutting himself shaving - if a lie it is - as tending to prove the element of murder of an intention to kill or to cause grievous bodily harm if, on the whole of the evidence, the accused lied because he realised that the truth of the matter in that respect would show that, in killing his wife, he had intended to kill her or to cause her grievous bodily harm,” Justice Byrne said.

“It may be that, even if you were to find that the accused lied about his facial injuries because he realised that the truth would show him to be the killer, still you would not conclude that the lie shows that he realised that her death after scratching him with her fingernails would show that he had killed her intentionally.”

The jury’s deliberations were interrupted on Thursday when it was revealed one juror had downloaded material from the internet. The material was from an overseas commentator who wrote about the role of a jury in a criminal trial

Mr Baden-Clay is accused of killing his wife Allison at their home in the affluent western Brisbane suburb of Brookfield on April 19, 2012, and dumping her body on the banks of Kholo Creek at Anstead, 14 kilometres away.

He has pleaded not guilty to murder.

Justice Byrne told the jurors for the first time on Wednesday they could consider a manslaughter verdict if they found Mr Baden-Clay not guilty of murder.

To find Mr Baden-Clay guilty of manslaughter, the jury does not need to conclude he intended to kill his wife, only that he did so unlawfully.

The prosecution has alleged Mr Baden-Clay was embroiled in an affair with his former employee Toni McHugh and was under significant financial pressure, owing hundreds of thousands of dollars to his family, friends and ex-business partners, at the time of his wife’s disappearance.

Mrs Baden-Clay was found dead on the banks of Kholo Creek on April 30, 2012, 10 days after her husband reported her missing.

Forensic pathologists were unable to determine the cause of her death.

Mr Baden-Clay’s defence counsel claimed there was insufficient forensic evidence to link the former real estate agent to the crime scene at Kholo Creek.

The defence pointed to Mrs Baden-Clay’s history with depression to suggest the mother-of-three took her own life in the early hours of April 20, 2012.

It also suggested Mrs Baden-Clay may have died by misadventure or accident, brought on by an overdose of her antidepressant medication Zoloft.

Mr Baden-Clay stepped into the witness box on the 11th day of the trial, where he emphatically denied killing his wife of 15 years.

If found guilty of murder Mr Baden-Clay faces at least 15 years' in jail without parole, while there is no fixed minimum non-parole period for manslaughter.